This document discusses the links between land use change, biodiversity loss, and pandemics like COVID-19. It notes that human activity has artificialized over 40% of the Earth's surface and that the current rate of species extinction is over 10,000 times the natural background rate. Deforestation, wildlife trade, and lack of biodiversity have reduced nature's ability to regulate diseases and provide stable ecosystem services. Intact forests and biodiversity help dilute transmission of pathogens like West Nile virus and Lyme disease. The 2003 European heat wave illustrated how stressed ecosystems struggled to regulate temperatures and moisture. To avoid future crises, we must acknowledge humanity's role in driving environmental changes and work to restore natural buffers against pan

1. Land use change and
biodiversity loss: the
scenario for COVID-19
Fernando Valladares

2. Images of recovery
during confinement

3. Images of recovery
during confinement

5. Is this showing a
recovery?
Full recovery?
Recovery of the
function?

6. 2019 – Greta Thunberg to United Nations
"We are facing the sixth
mass extinction … the rate
of extinction is 10,000
times faster than normal.
Every day 200 species
disappear”

7. Some numbers about our impact
• We and our domestic animals are about
98% of the world’s fauna
• About 40% of the Earth’s surface is
completely artificialized (urban,
suburban, agricultural, etc.)
• 37% is made up of natural habitats
heavily modified for anthropic use
(pastures and almost all forests), only
23% can still be classified as 'wild' (a few
remote forests, but almost only deserts,
mountain tops, and Arctic regions).
• IPBES Global Assessment on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services
1919, Laboratory for Anthropogenic Landscape Ecology, 2020

8. Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and
Ecosystem Services (IPBES – 2019)

9. Intergovernmental Science-
Policy Platform on Biodiversity
and Ecosystem Services
(IPBES – 2019)

10. How did we get here?

11. Big environmental errors made worse
biological invasions
• Error after error
• Rabits, foxes, viruses
• Return of viruses to Europe

12. Map of global risk of zoonotic infections by Allen et al (2017)
Not listening to science

13. Combination of new and old human activities
•Wet markets
•Ilegal poaching and species trade
•Deforestation
•Globalization

14. Functional biology,
functional biodiversity

15. Biology needed in global climatic models

16. Climate change affects and is affected by
biology
We know about the impacts of climate change on
ecosystems but much less about the reverse situation

17. Ciais et al. 2005, Nature; Peylin et al., unpublished
2003 heatwave: the main productivity crisis of the planet
of XX century
30% Reduction of GPP
0.5PgC Net source of CO2
4years Equivalent C sink
ModelNPPgCm-2mo
CO2Anomaly

18. 2003 heat wave
• The consequences were dramatic in
the ecosystems, in the human
population and the infrastructures of
Europe
• In some countries, such as France,
political crises related to the response
to the impacts of high temperatures
• The exact number of deaths directly
related to the strong heat is subject to
controversy
• France: 14.802 (30.000)
• Italy: 4.000 (20.000)
• Spain: 6.500 (13.000)
• Portugal: 1.316

19. 10 years later we
began to understand
what happened…

20. Biogeochemical Biophysical
clouds
Albedo
Sensible heat / Latent heat
Aerodinamic
resistance
CCN
BVOC emissions
CO 2 uptake
H2OH2O
Biogenic aerosols
Climate
feedbacks
Solar radiation
Temperature
Precipitation
Humidity
CO 2
Lengthening
of green cover
presence
(days )
Soil moisture
Global
warming
Wet conditions
Dry conditions
0
5
10
15
20
25
1950 1970 1990 2010
Courtesy of J. Peñuelas
A warm winter
advance the
production of leaves,
followed by a dry and
warm spring… all
this reduced the water
to transpire in
summer

21. Forests did not do their
function

22. Pandemics &
biodiversity

23. Biodiversity did not
do its job

24. Protection by
biodiversity
1 – Demographic control
2 – Dillution
Genetic diversity
Grupos funcionales
Host species
3 – Buffering

25. Relationship
between West
Nile virus (WNV)
disease incidence
in humans and
bird diversity for
US counties in the
year of peak
incidence
The importance of biodiversity

26. Relationship
between West
Nile virus (WNV)
disease incidence
in humans and
bird diversity for
US counties in the
year of peak
incidence
Ostfeld 2009

27. The importance
of fragmentation
and forest patch

28. Allan et al. 2003
Relationship
between forest
fragment size and
density of infected
nymphal Ixodes
scapularis ticks
(Lyme disease)

29. Scientific references

30. Options in the face of the
environmental crisis
1. To deny one or more pieces of the puzzle, so as to simplify it and
restore the satisfying dynamics of good versus evil. We should
choose our side, and then assume things do not work because of
the other side, whatever happens.
2. To accept that in the present and the near future we have several
possible choices, but none of them will avoid all major damage and
suffering. We will share responsibility.
3. To choose not to choose. But there will be painful consequences
anyway.

31. Thanks